I’d Rather Have The Poem

Universe is trippy.

I don’t feel like posting anything here today, feel more like, my mind is going to explode. I went about something in a round about way and I got assaulted from unexpected directions with honesty in a way I wasn’t expecting, so in return, I decided, fuck it. If I were to die tomorrow, I would want to know I did my absolute best to be honest with the people I really care about.

So I wrote some letters.

You can’t gain anything without risk, including your own salvation. And ultimately, art being the route to our own salvation is why I am writing here to begin with, so fuck it.

I’ll say it again.

Fuck it.

I am a sloppy mess sometimes. I love too hard and try to hide behind smokescreens and mirrors and yet still come across as raw and open and vulnerable in a way that makes some people cringe.

Fuck it.

The only way to be a decent musician, for me, is to put my heart in my songs. And in return, my songs give me myself. I learn things.

I was talking to a friend about poetry last night and he said, “I’d rather have her than the poem I wrote about her.”

I thought about that.

Many of my songs were born out of distress. I had no other way of working someone out from under my skin, so I tried to exorcise them through some sort of voodoo hex.

But some people are always under your skin, no matter what you do. You cannot win. You can’t force them out. You can’t distract yourself with other people without hurting those other people. With or without reciprocation, it just is.

It is what it is what it is, which is exactly what love is. It’s a thing that exists regardless of what you DO about it. It sparks, and it rests there and it changes you. You love people who are your mirrors because they teach you who you can be. People you love make you cry without knowing it because they remind you of how hard you have to work to even DESERVE someone as good as they are.

And we all come up lacking sometimes.

But the more you deny something real, something that gets in your guts and won’t unlatch itself, the bigger it becomes until it threatens to consume you and you can’t even be real with the people who you want to be real with.

I’d like to think I’m always honest, that I tell people how I feel, but I’m chickenshit a lot of the time. I hide behind stories and songs. And sometimes, no matter how many stories and songs I write, it doesn’t matter, a person just won’t fucking get out from my skin.

So, would I rather have the poem/song or the person.

I don’t know. I really like my songs. And my poems. I bled for them and they are immortal because I did. So. They mean something to me, something bigger than one love affair could be.

Because they give me hope.

And people come and go. But art, for some reason, transcends. From the spiderweb in the morning dew to the song you slaved for weeks to get just right, it all means something, even if it doesn’t feel like it. It is the beauty that is life.

0 comments

This was a powerful and raw piece. This line stood out to me just for how perfect it is: People you love make you cry without knowing it because they remind you of how hard you have to work to even DESERVE someone as good as they are.

And as far as your question…I personally think they are one and the same. You cannot have the person without the poem, or the poem without the person.